Lots of liberties are restricted in jail. — darthbarracuda

Yes, it also seems true to me that jailing someone severely restricts the scope of her freedom of action but doesn't necessarily obliterate it, or absolve her from all responsibility for anything that she might do while jailed. (I also hold that responsibility entails freedom).

No; breathing is demanded by your physiological makeup. You literally breathe on pain of death.

Same with eating, blinking, shitting, and sleeping. All of these are clearly coercive as much as being robbed; the cost of not doing the is literally dying painfully. — The Great Whatever

No no no, see, you are using the word coercive outside of its common usage, i.e. manipulating definitions to suit your argument.

A need does not have to be coercive if one does not mind having to satisfy it.

Thinking is a little trickier, but generally when compatibilists talk about freedom they have in mind things more substantial and consequential than mere (disembodied?) thinking. Insofar as thinking implies action, you are obviously not free to think very much at all. — The Great Whatever

Compatibilists are also more concerned with physical restrainment, not with disappointment at the failure to realize wishful thinking.

Also, thinking does not imply action necessarily. I can think about stuff all I want without acting upon it.

That's exactly what I just said. I didn't think claiming that jailed people aren't free would be so controversial. — The Great Whatever

Their freedom is restricted but not so much that it would be inhumane (at least it ought not to be). So of course they are not completely free, but that's not what you were claiming. You were claiming that by being in jail, you are without any freedoms whatsoever. That is clearly false.

If you are going to respond by saying that by holding our breath long enough, we will die, therefore we are "coerced" into breathing, then I would say that no, you are not "coerced" into living at all. You can glue tape over your nostrils and face and die of suffocation if you wish. You are free to do so.

If I thought it was beyond discussion, I wouldn't be discussing it. What are you even talking about? — The Great Whatever

You lopsided view of "discussion" seems to me just as extravagant as your view of "coercion". In this thread, you mainly reasserted your disputed claims while systematically ignoring my objections and requests for clarification.

No no no, see, you are using the word coercive outside of its common usage, i.e. manipulating definitions to suit your argument.

A need does not have to be coercive if one does not mind having to satisfy it. — darthbarracuda

What do you think 'coercive' means, exactly? I'm pretty sure what you just said is not what it means.

Their freedom is restricted but not so much that it would be inhumane (at least it ought not to be) — darthbarracuda

We're talking about jail, right? Prison, rather?

you are not "coerced" into living at all. — darthbarracuda

Of course you are; no one choose to be born. It's not even possible.

What do you want me to say? That people in prison are free to go to the bathroom right when they feel like they have to pee, or several minutes after?

What do you think 'coercive' means, exactly? I'm pretty sure what you just said is not what it means. — The Great Whatever

To force someone to do something that they do not want to do.

We're talking about jail, right? Prison, rather? — The Great Whatever

Yes, we are. Prisons are not concentration camps.

Of course you are; no one choose to be born. It's not even possible. — The Great Whatever

You are not coerced into continuing living. Again this is just devolving into your negative view on life. Insofar that you do not desire to continue to live, then the various institutions in society surrounding you as well as your own self-preservation mechanism are indeed nudging you along to continue your life. They aren't coercing you, though, nor are they prohibiting you from ending your life if you do so wish to.

Get used to it, this happens a lot with him.

That's exactly what I just said. I didn't think claiming that jailed people aren't free would be so controversial. — The Great Whatever

It's not controversial at all. One one natural reading of the claim, it's a truism. On another, more contentious, reading of the claims, it is quite disputable. Your argument trades on a equivocation between those two readings, as I've already explained a few times. What is questionable is the claim that *any* action preformed by a person who is jailed is thereby also "coerced". Also questionable is the claim that being born is akin to being jailed in the relevant respect required for your argument to go through.

What do you want me to say? That people in prison are free to go to the bathroom right when they feel like they have to pee, or several minutes after? — The Great Whatever

I've already acknowledged that people in prison may have the scope of their freedom severely restricted. This doesn't help you much in securing your wild extrapolation to the claim that being born is akin to being restricted to just the sorts of actions comparable to the fulfillment of passive bodily functions. You never defend the wild extrapolation beyond reasserting the very weak premise from which it doesn't follow.

To force someone to do something that they do not want to do. — darthbarracuda

Okay, that says nothing about whether you 'mind' doing it.

One one natural reading of the claim, it's a truism. On another, more contentious, reading of the claims, it is quite disputable. Your argument trades on a equivocation between those two readings, as I've already explained a few times. — Pierre-Normand

Maybe your problem is that you have a schizophrenic way of making claims: they are either philosophical or non-philosophical. But I don't see that as something that I have to answer for; rather you do.

If there is a reading that appears naturally to you on which such a claim is false, may I suggest that perhaps you can't read. (Or that the way you've been taught to read hasn't done you much good).

Okay, that says nothing about whether you 'mind' doing it. — The Great Whatever

But...it does...if you don't mind doing something, than you either have no preference or you actually want to do it. If you do mind doing something, that means that some kind of incentive must be made to make your do it (i.e. coercion). Otherwise you wouldn't do it.

Okay, there is such an incentive. If you don't do it, you literally die painfully. What more incentive do you want?

Perhaps you don't care about dying? Who said you were coerced into continuing living? Nobody has you strapped up in a gurney preventing you from ending it peacefully and painlessly.

Maybe your problem is that you have a schizophrenic way of making claims: they are either philosophical or non-philosophical. But I don't see that as something that I have to answer for; rather you do. — The Great Whatever

Forget about philosophy and philosophical theses, then. Let us stick to the ordinary senses of freedom at issue when we say (1) that jailed people are deprived of freedom and (2) that people coerced to act in some specific way aren't free to act differently. They are still two distinct uses of the concept of freedom. It's not quite the same thing (1) to have some of your basic freedoms curtailed (e.g. being coerced to remain in jail) and (2) to have all of your options removed, at any single time, except one unique course of action (e.g. being coerced to eat your broccoli). You are trading on this equivocation between two ordinary, albeit distinct, uses of "being free" in order to slide from the premise than jailed people "aren't free" to the conclusion that people who simply have been born "aren't free" in whatever they do.

I'm not sure why every other time you respond to me, you're basically not-so-subtley telling me to kill myself. It's rude.

What options worth the name does someone in prison have? Seriously?

I'm not telling you to kill yourself, what a straw man! I'm telling you that you are free to kill yourself if you desire!

Furthermore, it's kind of odd that you are complaining about being "coerced" into living, and yet take offense when someone points out that you actually aren't and that you have the ability to end it if you actually do think you are being coerced. If you actually did think that you were being coerced into living, you wouldn't take offense by me pointing out that you have other options.

What options worth the name does someone in prison have? Seriously? — The Great Whatever

Well, if they had all the options of that we enjoy outside of prison, then there really wouldn't be any point of prison now would there?

What options worth the name does someone in prison have? Seriously? — The Great Whatever

That would depend on the prison you have been forcefully put or born into. Have you been born in Alcatraz? Or in North Korea? Or in Norway? Or on Earth (while being free to move to any country, or to a desert island)? Don't you see some gradation in point of freedom? For your argument to run through you have to call them all prisons and deny any gradation. But what justification do you have for calling them all "prisons" without begging the question?

There actually are coercive mechanisms keeping people alive to suffer once they are born, such as survival instincts, the general pain attending dying, guilt, shame and illegality of suicide (including censure from family members, government, and religion, sometimes threats of burning in hell for eternity), and so on.

You are simply wrong in your description; people go apeshit at the idea of suicide, and there are systematic and painfu pressures in place to keep the coercive institution going once in place.

If the gradation isn't significant, then it doesn't affect the argument in an interesting way. If you want a verbal dispute, okay, but I don't. Too much philosophy will do that to you.

There actually are coercive mechanisms keeping people alive to suffer once they are born, such as survival instincts, the general pain attending dying, guilt, shame and illegality of suicide (including censure from family members, government, and religion, sometimes threats of burning in hell for eternity), and so on. — The Great Whatever

These are manipulating mechanisms but not inhibitory (coercive) mechanisms. They can manipulate you and make it harder to end your life if you do so please, but they do not prevent you from doing so (as evidence of the rising percentage of suicide rates).

You are simply wrong in your description; people go apeshit at the idea of suicide, and there are systematic and painfu pressures in place to keep the coercive institution going once in place. — The Great Whatever

Well, of course they go apeshit, because they're scared out of the minds of death. But it's not coercion.

If the gradation isn't significant, then it doesn't affect the argument in an interesting way. If you want a verbal dispute, okay, but I don't. Too much philosophy will do that to you. — The Great Whatever

I don't see an argument. There is just equivocation. If your premise is that any restriction in the scope of freedom, however tiny, is the same as the total annihilation of freedom akin to coercion to do one sigle thing, then your premise is question begging. It is just a rephrasing of your contentious conclusion.

These are manipulating mechanisms but not inhibitory (coercive) mechanisms. They can manipulate you and make it harder to end your life if you do so please, but they do not prevent you from doing so (as evidence of the rising percentage of suicide rates). — darthbarracuda

In many cases, yes, they will physically prevent you from killing yourself if you try. Psychiatrists nd psychologists for example are entitled to have you interred against your will if you intimate that you are thinking of killing yourself, and suicide is also literally illegal in most places (with illegality always backed by force).

In addition the many unofficial social mechanisms that serve to shame, bully, threaten, etc. the suicidal are coercive in that they inflict large amounts of pain as a mechanism for preventing suicide or making it impracticable.

Finally, even if suicide were completely free, birth would still be coercive, because one cannot consent to it. The fact that it might be possible to undo does not make it any less forced (and much of the pain endured happens before it is possible to kill oneself).

I never said any of those things. Why respond if you're not going to read what I write?

In many cases, yes, they will physically prevent you from killing yourself if you try. Psychiatrists nd psychologists for example are entitled to have you interred against your will if you intimate that you are thinking of killing yourself, and suicide is also literally illegal in most places (with illegality always backed by force). — The Great Whatever

Not all places, though. And it's sad that suicide is illegal. In many cases these preventative instincts will stop you from killing yourself. But they are not 100% failproof in the way a jailcell is. You can actually commit suicide quite easily these days if you just sit in the garage with the car on and some classical music playing.

In addition the many unofficial social mechanisms that serve to shame, bully, threaten, etc. the suicidal are coercive in that they inflict large amounts of pain as a mechanism for preventing suicide or making it impracticable. — The Great Whatever

Not always.

Finally, even if suicide were completely free, birth would still be coercive, because one cannot consent to it. The fact that it might be possible to undo does not make it any less forced (and much of the pain endured happens before it is possible to kill oneself). — The Great Whatever

No shit, I've been saying this since day one.

Not all places, though. And it's sad that suicide is illegal. In many cases these preventative instincts will stop you from killing yourself. But they are not 100% failproof in the way a jailcell is. You can actually commit suicide quite easily these days if you just sit in the garage with the car on and some classical music playing. — darthbarracuda

Actually, many cars no longer work for suicide, and people generally want to find ways to stop people form killing themselves (making helium tanks non-lethal, etc.)

Not always. — darthbarracuda

Suicide is almost always committed under great duress and in extreme pain.

No shit, I've been saying this since day one. — darthbarracuda

Okay? Then why are you arguing with me?

I never said any of those things. Why respond if you're not going to read what I write? — The Great Whatever

You denied that there is any significant gradation in between the series of examples that I offered for your consideration: from being forcibly jailed in Alcatraz to being born on Earth. You implied that my suggestion that there might be a significant gradation that your are failing to acknowledge is merely a pointless verbal dispute -- a symptom of exposure to philosophy. This means that, in your view, it is indisputable that being put in jail is the same as being born on Earth. This is precisely the question begging premise that you are pushing.

Actually, many cars no longer work for suicide, and people generally want to find ways to stop people form killing themselves (making helium tanks non-lethal, etc.) — The Great Whatever

In those cases these measures are not taken to prevent intentional death but rather accidental death; preventing intentional death is an addition.

And I'm sure if you really wanted to kill yourself, money would not be an issue for you if you wanted to buy a cheap car that could kill you.

Suicide is almost always committed under great duress and in extreme pain. — The Great Whatever

Sure. But the act itself does not require extreme pain. You're grasping at straws here.

Okay? Then why are you arguing with me? — The Great Whatever

Because you're wrong in other areas.